


the cut keeps dripping but the blood won’t thicken

by caelzorah



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F, impaired taste/loss of sensation, politics and mental illness, post 3x02, prepare yourself the Commander of Sad has arrived, what else did you expect
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-02
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-17 20:04:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5883787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caelzorah/pseuds/caelzorah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>‘The Azgeda are moving against me, Clarke,’ Lexa explains, curbing her emotions as usual and getting down to business. It is a relieving prospect – the sooner she is done speaking, the sooner Clarke can reject her offer. ‘The situation at Mount Weather has put the coalition in a precarious position.’</p><p>‘Of course,’ Clarke says, ‘because who wants to follow a traitorous scumbag into war?’</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heartshapedcandy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartshapedcandy/gifts).



> Commander of Sad, reporting for duty.

For all her posturing, for all that Lexa’s polite words were meant in stead of “this is for your own good”, the cell that Clarke is condemned to is notably spartan. There is a bucket in the corner – Clarke knows what for without asking – and a mattress on the floor to one side of the room; there's nothing else. The guards toss her in roughly, hands still bound, and slam the door shut behind her. It is wooden, reinforced with welded metal. There is a short gap at the base tall enough for a tray to slide through but worth nothing to her now, and Clarke yells and pounds on the panels above it with booted feet until her throat is hoarse and the fire in her chest burns down to glowing embers. Then she lays still with her back to the floor, counting the cracks in the ceiling.

There is a single window high on the concrete wall opposing the door, but she cannot see out of it; it is riddled with crude metal slats sloping down towards the ground outside, letting in dim light and a slight breeze and obstructing her view of the sky. It is maybe twelve inches out of her reach and the wall beneath it is too smooth to scale. No getting out that way – no getting out at all.

The room is small, and bare, and it brings bile bubbling up her throat. She swallows it.

Clarke kicks off her left boot, picks it up with bound hands and shakes it until a folded slip of parchment drops out. It opens between her fingers to a creased page with nine hundred and thirty seven short black strokes on the surface and a rusted razor blade sitting safely in the centre. The blade's edge gleams, sharp and new.

The rope around her wrist goes in a few short moments and she rubs at the raw skin for ten seconds or so before tucking the razor back in it’s envelope, tugging her boot back on and shuffling towards the mattress. It is old – disgustingly so – and darker than she’s sure it should be. When she kicks it a visible cloud of dust erupts from the surface and the creak of ancient springs sounds from within the rotting material.

It doesn’t take long for her to tear the mattress open and salvage a spring from the wreck. She flips the bed over to hide the sabotage and takes a seat with her back to the wall beneath the window. Then she waits, scraping the metal wire in her hand against the floor so it will sharpen, prisoner again.

She always is.

 

\--

 

The first guard to come for her does so while she is dozing, calls her “wanheda” and tries to physically pull her up by the arm. She buries the spring so far in his shoulder that it goes with him when his partner drags him from the room.

She sharpens another spring. This one goes in to the thigh of a young woman intent on bringing the grimy wanheda to some kind of stately audience with the Commander. She doesn’t get Clarke out of the room, but she does have the sense to get the butchered mattress taken out in the prisoner's stead.

They leave her be after that.

 

\--

 

Her meals come thrice a day. They slide a tray and a bowl of water underneath the door and do not speak to her.

She slides them straight back under the door, untouched, and when they do not get the picture well enough she takes her bucket – only emptied once daily, when three silent guards back her into a corner and allow the servant to replace it unhindered – and tips as much of it's contents over the meal as she can without causing a spill before sliding it back.

When the sound of footsteps walking the hall for food call next comes, she is glad to find that the scrape of a tray does not meet her cell.

 

\--

 

Indra comes in the night while Clarke is trying to sleep. The sound of the door grinding open on its hinges is only marginally more pleasant of a wake up call than her nightmares are.

The Trikru leader stands in the doorway with a candle in her hand casting warm light to every corner of Clarke’s dank pit of a cell; she makes no attempt to move further in or force her agenda.

What a pleasant change.

‘Our healers had difficulty removing the steel from where you screwed it into Erak’s shoulder the other day,’ the stoic general says, unimpressed as ever, and Clarke stares at her and says nothing. ‘You have not been eating. My people call you Wanheda, and yet here you sit - stewing in the dirt of travel and your own filth, starving yourself to death because you are _stubborn_.’

Indra is harsh in her words, but her voice is almost gentle in its volume. It makes sense that this woman would only show her kindness – no matter how small – in the dead of night with only the walls to witness it.

When Clarke does not respond, Indra continues: ‘Your people have been searching for you.’

‘They should stop,’ Clarke tells her, and the words are rough and hoarse when they pass her lips, carried by a throat that screamed itself dry and has not had water for days.

‘You knew that they were looking.’

‘I know more than you give me credit for,’ the blonde says, and feels the grime around her mouth crack with the movement. ‘And even if I didn’t – Bellamy found me, while your _bounty hunter_ tied me to a rail in an abandoned subway station. He may lose a leg for it.’

‘You do not approve,’ Indra comments lowly, a gleam in her eyes.

‘Your heda’s agenda and the kinds of people she hires to carry it out are not the kind of things I find myself enamoured by,’ Clarke croaks. ‘What do you want?’

‘I am to move you,’ Indra informs her simply. ‘Heda believes that with kinder lodgings you may be more… receptive.’

Clarke’s laugh is derisive – more so when Indra steps aside and two guards enter the room to wrangle her out. They are more careful than their predecessors.

The room they bring her to is frankly lavish in comparison to her cell. There is a bedframe against one wall, a straw mattress with room enough for two and a pile of furs atop it. It is bordered by shelves, mostly stacked with ornaments and folded cloth – clothes, probably, afforded to her in light of whatever station the commander has deemed her fit to hold. A table stands in the centre of the room, a tray atop its surface piled with food fit for kings and two chairs tucked beneath. On the far wall – _far_ because this room is five times the size of the claustrophobic pit she has inhabited thus far – there is a metal tub large enough for a grown man to sit in, a light cloud of steam rising from its mouth. A bath, with a floor length mirror and a small table laden with bars of soap beside it – prepared, presumably, for her. Even animals must wash, it seems.

Cloth drapery covers the concrete walls – an attempt at homeliness or something of the sort. The room is lit by a dozen candles. There are no windows.

Indra’s guards leave and close the door behind them - and then it is just Clarke and a woman who has always wanted her dead.

‘You will bathe,’ Indra tells her. ‘And then you will eat. I will go when this is done.’

Clarke is many things and furious is high among them – but she is also capable of picking her battles, and smart enough to know that this should not be one of them.

There is a blonde girl in the mirror when she passes it, bruised and bloody and covered in dirt. She is a stranger. Clarke does not pause to look at her.

Disrobing is fast and painful. Somewhere in the last few days her undershirt has fused with the gauze the Niylah used to cover her wound, but even the feeling of the mix of fabric, dirt and dried poultice tearing away from her skin is not enough to coax a sound from her lips. She drops her crusted clothing in a pile on the ground and ignores the sound of Indra shifting behind her by the door.

‘Did Roan do this?’ the Trikru leader asks.

‘No,’ Clarke grunts shortly and unfastens the tie of her breeches. She does not expect privacy from her locum prison warden and refuses to do them both the disservice of asking for it.

The water is lukewarm when Clarke steps in but when she sits and lets it cover her it feels almost as though it is scalding. Her chest clenches, and her skin tingles, and when she takes a breath and submerges entirely the unpleasant weight eclipses her face and her mind runs rampant.

Her skin itches at the warmth and Clarke thinks: _this must be it. This must be what the people of the mountain felt while I burned them alive._

She stays beneath the water until her chest aches, starved for air, and white spots erupt behind closed eyelids. When she surfaces it is gasping and spluttering, and with a racing, heavy heart. Shaking hands scrabble for the soap on the table at her side and she spends several short minutes scrubbing her skin raw, rubbing the suds roughly into her hair and yanking at the strands until her scalp is numb. She washes the soap away with water in cupped hands and does not submerge again.

When she cannot stand the warmth on her skin any longer she stands. Indra has left her a pile of clothing and a roughly hewn towel on the tub-side table and retreated back towards the doors, and Clarke dries herself quickly and pulls the rough cotton clothing over her raw skin. She is glad for the dark shade of the material; the water that cleaned her is red-hued beneath the top layer of dirt, and the way the shirt sticks immediately to her wounded shoulder is telling. Indra doesn’t mention it – perhaps because she doesn’t notice, perhaps because she doesn’t care – and Clarke chooses not to bring it up.

This time when she passes the mirror she hesitates. There is something ethereal about the clean face staring back at her – something false. She is not gaunt enough in her cheeks, and there is too much life in her eyes. The image is familiar, but unsettling – a mess of features she recognises but can’t identify. No monster so heavily scarred should seem so untouched.

‘Eat,’ Indra tells her stiffly when the pause drags out too long. There is nothing appealing about the order, but it drags Clarke’s gaze away from the ghost in the mirror all the same.

She sits at the table slowly, uncomfortably, and pulls the tray of food toward her as she knows Indra expects. It is piled with bread, seasoned meat, cheese, and some kind of stewed vegetable - and though the scent is heavenly it only serves to make Clarke’s stomach roil. The fork is odd in her hand – something long forgotten, something outside of the realm of campfire meals and jerky, and all the things she’s had to eat with her hands. It is as odd to her now as it was in Mount Weather when Dante served her chocolate cake as an entrée to anguish, back before she shot him in the chest and killed his people.

The fork clatters when it hits the tabletop.

Indra’s huff is audible before she stomps towards the table, grabs the fork, spears three pieces on the plate and shoves them in her own mouth. After she has chewed and swallowed she holds the fork out for Clarke.

‘It is not poisoned,’ the woman practically snarls. Clarke scowls and takes the preferred utensil.

‘I know,’ Clarke says. Indra frowns, apparently not expecting the certainty.

‘Then what’s the problem?’ When Clarke isn’t immediate with her answer, the warrior continues: ‘This meal was prepared by the finest cooks in Polis. You must appreciate this?’

‘You may as well serve me gruel for all the difference it makes,’ Clarke tells the older woman dryly, but loads up a sparse forkful and consumes it to please her. It tastes like nothing but ashes in her mouth; she chews until the food is mush on her tongue and swallows it with a grimace. Indra’s gaze is curious – reluctantly so – and Clarke grumbles her explanation. ‘I lost my sense of taste four days after the mountain.’

‘Why?’ Indra asks, and frowns angrily when Clarke only shrugs and forces herself to take another bite. ‘It has been three months. You ate regardless, obviously, or you would not be here now.’

‘I ate to live,’ Clarke grunt.

‘Then why refuse food here?’ Indra asks, her tone firm. She expects an answer – probably something about spiting the Commander or cautiousness of poison. This is not the case; Clarke is more afraid of knives in the back these days. ‘Why now?’

‘This,’ Clarke tells her with a short flick of her hand to note the room around them, ‘this is not the life I wanted. Do you understand?’

The hardness in Indra’s gaze proves that she does.

‘There are still people that need you, Clarke.’

‘Believe what you will,’ Clarke returns after snorting out a laugh around a mouthful of food. She forces herself to take another bite so that Indra will not resort to doing it for her – loading up a fork and using her calloused hands to force it between Clarke's lips, the likely cost of non-compliance. ‘Your heda will say whatever she thinks sounds best but we all know why I’m really here.’

Indra appears lost with what to say next but she is saved from pursuing the conversation when the door behind her opens and two men come in to deal with Clarke's finished bath. The blonde knows better than to make a move toward the door - Indra’s hand moved to the pommel of her sword as soon as the lock clicked, and there are likely at least two guards standing watch outside. Indra seems to realise her duty is done as the two servants finish up and take their leave.

‘Knock for the guards if you need assistance,’ the Trikru leader tells her stiffly, turning to leave. She pauses in the doorway. ‘You could grow to like it here, Clarke.’

She does not turn at Clarke’s responding laughter but her shoulders do noticeably stiffen at the sound. They sag at the sentence that follows.

‘A cage is still a cage, Indra, no matter how large.’

 

\--

 

A healer comes to her door some hours later. He asks many questions and she answers none. When he moves closer and yanks at her shirtsleeve with intent to examine her shoulder she jerks from his hold and breaks one of her chairs across his back.

The guards remove him from the room, along with the debris, and leave her to pace back and forth along the far wall until her legs grow as tired as the rest of her.

 

\--

 

In her new room, without even the barest light source of her old one, it becomes difficult to mark the days. She blows most of her candles out and sits in the dark, and in a way it reminds her of her youth – minus the view. She eats because she does not want the discomfort of being forced to and sleeps because there is little else to do.

It is a short walk with an escort of four to the restrooms, and there is no glimpse of sunlight along the way. That doesn’t make the trip any less informative: Polis can boast, prison buckets aside, a passingly functional sewer system; servants replace the things in her room only while she is absent from it; her guards are silent, but regular and clearly handpicked for the task, and their caution towards her is obvious; her room is at the dead end of a corridor with only one way out.

It’s a familiar feeling.

 

\--

 

Her shoulder starts to itch. She ignores it to stare at the flames of the last few lit candles – probably just imagining it anyway.

The shadows in her room start to move out of time with the fire, so she blows them all out.

 

\--

 

Clarke is awoken by the click of the lock. She feels flushed and sweaty, and despite the overwhelming heat of her body she is wracked with shivers. It is not like the cold sweat she has grown used to.

Indra appears in the outline of the doorway with her ever-present scowl and her hand on the pommel of her sword. She grumbles lowly in Trigedasleng while one of her guards goes about lighting candles in the dark room, long since extinguished, and the other drops a bowl of water and a rag on her table. Clarke makes out “fool girl” and “pit” but doesn’t care to pay more attention than that.

‘Prepare yourself, wanheda,’ she says when her guards have done their duties and Clarke is squinting into the dim candlelight.

Clarification is not required; it is immediately clear to Clarke that her precious highness, heda of the twelve clans, has finally deemed her fit to visit. Given Clarke's violent displays of reluctance every time they try to deliver her (as the four more guard with bruises, scrapes, or fractured limbs attest) it's not necessarily surprising. It had to happen sooner or later. She has barely managed to drag herself from the corner of the room where her furs now reside and wet the washcloth on the table when Indra coughs and steps out of the doorway.

Lexa enters with every ounce of stately grace she possesses, only Clarke doesn’t pay her the favour of watching – she is too hot, and her stomach is hinting at nausea, and somewhere beneath that she is sure her rage remains. Instead she wipes at her face with the wet rag and hopes that her head will stop spinning.

‘Clarke,’ Lexa greets, and pauses for a reply that doesn’t come. ‘You have injured seven of my best staff during your stay here and I have afforded you compassion in spite of this. The least you could do is turn to face me.’

‘ _Compassion_?’ Clarke asks, incredulous, and fixes her gaze on the bowl of water and the ripples that run across its surface when she wrings the rag out above it. ‘Hardly. We have very different opinions on what can be considered a kindness, heda.’

‘You threatened my life upon arrival,’ the Commander says stiffly. ‘It is a _kindness_ that you even yet _live_.’

Clarke laughs and laughs until the world around her sways and she has to fumble for the single chair remaining by her table. When she has collapsed into the seat she turns her head to take in Lexa’s worried gaze. The sight only makes her laugh harder. Her chest is aching by the time that the fit winds down, and when Clarke comes back to herself it is to find that Lexa has dismissed all but Indra from the room. The Commander waits until Clarke is paying her attention before moving any closer - and _that_ is the only kindness here.

‘I understand that you are upset with me, Clarke,’ Lexa tells her, trying at gentleness, and Clarke physically bites her tongue to prevent the “I don’t think you do” from slipping out. ‘Truly. But I cannot keep affording you forgiveness for these outbursts. There is a limit to my lenience, and I will not stand for you trying to make a fool out of me in front of my people.’

‘Perhaps you shouldn’t have brought me here then,’ Clarke snipes. She leans back in her chair and rasps in a breath when the fabric of her shirt shifts, slow and sticky, against the healing wound on her shoulder.

‘The Ice Queen would have you dead,’ Lexa tells her stonily. ‘She would cut off your head and parade it around as a sign of power. You should be thanking me for my protection. This _is_ a kindness, Clarke.’

‘Believe what helps you sleep at night,’ Clarke states through gritted teeth, shifting to loosen the pull at the back of her shirt. ‘But the worth of the alternative doesn’t make it so.’

Lexa shields herself less in front of her General now it would seem - if the frustrated growl she lets out is any indication. She steps forward into Clarke’s space, and her expression is one of genuine hurt when Clarke plants her feet and skids her chair back across the floor. It makes the pain that flares across Clarke’s back entirely worth it.

‘The Azgeda are moving against me, Clarke,’ Lexa explains, curbing her emotions as usual and getting down to business. It is a relieving prospect – the sooner she is done speaking, the sooner Clarke can reject her offer. ‘The situation at Mount Weather has put the coalition in a precarious position.’

‘Of course,’ Clarke says, ‘because who wants to follow a traitorous scumbag into war?’

By the door, Indra shifts – but for perhaps the first time in Clarke’s eyes it is a gesture of discomfort rather than a threat. In front of her, Lexa recoils.

‘That is not what –’

‘No, it’s not _everything_ ,’ Clarke cuts in. ‘What’s the worth of a leader who cannot fell mountains with an army at her back when a single girl, abandoned, could kill them all from the inside out? It's that they see you for what you are, Lexa, instead of the god you made yourself to be. It’s that they think you’re _weak_.’

The words rise from her throat like bile and Lexa balks - as she always has when faced with Clarke’s harsh words. They have shared only twelve days of their lives, but those twelve days have been telling: honesty has always had more of an effect on Lexa than threats, or fire, or knives.

‘I've been among your clans for all the months that I've been alone,’ Clarke states dryly. A shudder starts in her chest, moves left and skates down her arm and into her fingers. She grips at the seat of her chair to stifle it. ‘So yes, Lexa, I know about your “precarious position”. I know what they think of you. And I know why you brought me here. But I want nothing to do with your political maneuvering.’

‘That is _not_ why I brought you here,’ Lexa says with sudden vehemence. ‘Whether you want to hear it or not, I care ab–’

Clarke’s reaction is explosive, and she does not realise she intends it until it is already in motion. The chair beneath her skids back across the floor when she launches to her feet and clatters when it tips over. Lexa has already closed most of the distance between them so Clarke doesn’t have far to go to get her clammy hands around the Commander’s throat.

‘Stop lying,’ Clarke says, the tone deathly, flat and furious while Lexa rasps and brings her hands up to pull at Clarke’s wrists. ‘Stop lying to me.’

‘Clarke,’ Lexa chokes out. ‘Stop. Don’t want to – hurt you.’

The sound of Indra’s hurried approach is loud in Clarke’s ear’s, even as her mouth moves to supply the fractured response: ‘It’s too late for that.’

Indra presses at her back and wraps an arm around her neck, trying for a headlock – to subdue, but not to harm, though the note of it is distant in Clarke’s mind.

‘Wanheda – _Clarke_ ,’ Indra appeals, ‘let her go. Release heda and I release you.’

It only manages to encourage Clarke’s grip to tighten, frighteningly warm where it crushes the Commander’s windpipe while a snarl bubbles out of her own throat. Clarke thinks she would die content as long as she took Lexa with her to the grave. The thought carries her until her vision spots and Lexa looks about ready to fight back.

Beyond them, in the dark corners of Clarke’s prison, a shadow moves.

‘No,’ Clarke spits out. ‘Go away now.’

Lexa, apparently having had enough, steps closer into Clarke’s space and delivers a brutal knee to the gut - but that is only half the reason Clarke lets her go. Indra’s grip does not let up until Lexa is metres away, rubbing at the raw skin of her throat and glaring at her attacker. Clarke pays no heed to her, eyes locked on the shadows in the corner.

‘I’m sorry,’ Clarke says, gasping in breath, and Lexa might soften at it – or she might find the idea of an apology after the attempted strangulation even more offensive, who knows – but it doesn’t matter. The words aren’t for her. She probably realises this after Clarke stumbles right past her and sinks roughly to the floor. ‘It was a mercy, I swear. I know it more now.’

Clarke kneels facing nothing but her demons, and maybe it makes her crazy but there is nothing more real to her in this cell than Atom and the steel set of his shoulders. He kneels in front of her, black hair cropped short, jaw loose but no less defined for the fact, blue eyes piercing and kinder than she deserves. He reaches down to take her hands and lifts them to rest in his, palms facing upward between them.

He is silent. Her ghosts always are.

There is the muffled sound of a voice somewhere at her back, but Clarke is more fascinated by the absent warmth of Atom’s hold than the prospect of talking. Her palms are still hot from their time spent twisting around the Commander’s throat in hopes of crushing her trachea, the heat ramps up to scorching as she stares.

Her skin reddens, bubbles and swells before her eyes and she watches with rapt fascination as the phenomenon crawls across her skin to her wrists, down the length of her forearm and up beneath her shirtsleeves. Atom’s hands keep her own steady as they mutate, and when she returns her gaze to his face he is as she last saw him – eyes milky and greying, wrecked, mutilated by the acid fog that enveloped him.

It is horrifying, and when her shoulder flares with the pain of an invisible touch she knows that the acid has spread properly to it; her stomach roils and she lurches forward. Atom does not evaporate like smoke – he is simply there one moment and gone the next while she dry heaves in the space he inhabited.

Her hands, pressed to the floor to hold her up, are smooth and normal again with no sign of the acid burns, but her shoulder feels for a moment as though the skin is being torn from her healing wound. But no – it’s just her shirt being raised from her flesh.

‘Stupid girl,’ Indra’s voice says through the fog. ‘It’s an infection.’

Clarke has enough presence of mind before she passes out to say: ‘Great. Let it kill me.’

 

\--

 

They don’t.


	2. Chapter 2

Fever wracks her for days.

 

\--

 

The healer she wakes to is not the same one she attacked with a dining chair – apparently _he_ has retreated to work in an environment he considers to be safer: the front lines of the brewing war. His replacement is a weedy young girl with a permanent scowl who shoves Clarke around until she submits to treatment and threatens to sedate her if she gets any ideas.

‘Wanheda kom au nonheda taim haken sef ona,’ the girl tells her gruffly. ‘Shara dreins haken, Shara kot we yu stedaun tishyu. Shara don fis yu op, yu chil daun gon Shara.’

The translation, to Clarke, is best summarised as thus: “You're worth nothing if you're dead. So do what I say”. She takes liberties, of course. But it is not the words that stay Clarke’s hand – it is what she sees creeping beneath Shara’s rough exterior: the alien trait in this cruel life, the cause of her downfall, the same fragile quality that drew her to Niylah’s bed.

It’s kindness.

Shara is firm with her, without nonsense, but her intentions are good and Clarke cannot bring herself to punish the woman for that. Shara has done her duty in treating the infection of Clarke’s shoulder, as ordered and out of a desire to heal. It is not on her to know that her attentions would be better spent on worthier souls. Shara comes to her frequently – without true concept of time, Clarke can only guess that it must be two or three times a day, but certainty is a rarity in her windowless existence – to clean her wound and change the dressing. She often comes with cups of foul smelling liquid, and though Shara never says more about the concoction than the initial direction to ‘drein daun’, Clarke knows it’s probably some kind of antibiotic.

The fifth or sixth time that this happens – when Clarke is lucid enough to remember it, anyway – the Commander spirits into the room with Indra following cautiously behind right as Shara passes the cup to her patient, seated at the table. Clarke ignores them both and lifts the drink to her lips to tip the sludge down her throat, unaffected.

‘Gud,’ Shara grunts, approving, before she takes the empty cup from Clarke’s offering hand, gathers the soiled gauze and takes her leave.

‘Impressive, Clarke,’ Lexa notes. ‘I have never seen anyone drink that kind of _fiswada_ without gagging. It tastes foul.’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ Clarke tells her idly. By the door, Indra frowns. There is a pause as Lexa debates what to say, if anything, and decides to forge on elsewhere in light of her confusion.

‘I'm pleased to see you improving,’ the Commander says. ‘Perhaps now we can have a conversation without any… erratic outbursts.’

‘If you believed that you wouldn’t have brought Indra with you,’ Clarke points out. ‘But by all means, try your best.’

Clarke finally pays the Commander the honour of her full attention – as “full” as it can be, given the way her world warps without days to mark it by. When their gazes connect, Lexa’s hand raises, seemingly involuntarily, to brush against the dark bruising around her throat. Clarke is no longer expelling her rage with every exhale, spitting or rearing to strike, but that does not mean that the anger has left her; the satisfaction that comes with the sight of the branded collar of Clarke’s fingertips at the Commander’s neck, stark and dangerous, is visceral.

‘The Azgeda have marched on Trigedakru territory,’ Lexa tells her stiffly. ‘I have evacuated most of the major villages in their path, but there have been losses. They have'nt yet committed to a march on Polis.’

‘Of course not,’ Clarke says. ‘Your Coalition may fracture and break, but the Ice Queen needs my head on a stick before she can turn it against you.’ When the Commander only stares at her in response, Clarke continues, ‘Feverish or not, I meant it when I said I knew why you brought me here.’

‘If you _know_ that I have brought you here for protection why do you continue to reject my care?’ Lexa asks suddenly, brow furrowed. She scowls when Clarke crosses her arms over her chest and purses her lips in reply, but says nothing. ‘You have always had a rational mind, Clarke. You may loathe me for my actions at the mountain, but you must appreciate what I am doing for you now.’

Clarke leans back in her chair, quirks a brow, and lets the silence extend for almost a minute before deeming it necessary to respond to the Commander’s obvious attempt at a call out.

‘You and I have different opinions on how much, exactly, you’ve done for me thus far,’ the she says. ‘But whenever you’re done seeking gratitude that won't come, please get on with the political bullshit.’

Lexa grinds her teeth before forging on.

‘This leaves the Sky People in a delicate position, also,’ the Commander barks, ‘which may mean more to you than my potential downfall.’

‘Enlighten me on how that is a problem.’

‘The Azgeda will approach them with one of two options in mind: join them in an Alliance against me – in which case the Sky People will die by _my_ swords – or suffer destruction at the hands of the Azgedakru themselves. The latter is more likely, considering the skirmishes that the Azgeda have had with your people over these last few months,’ the Commander explains promptly. ‘Either way, the Skaikru will be removed from the equation. Their weapons are too much of a power to be left unattended by either side – which is why I need their allegiance on a level greater than the fragile terms held since the mountain.’

‘Maybe I should be more clear,’ Clarke says. ‘Enlighten me on how that's a problem _for me_.’

The Commander seems nonplussed by the response, entirely thrown off by Clarke’s absence on the matter. It makes sense: Lexa’s values are not Clarke’s, and Trikru traditions often hardly resemble Skaikru ones at all. The question, of course, is whether the Commander is unaware of the consequences of Clarke’s self-imposed exile or simply ignoring them for her own ends.

‘All within the walls of Arkadia are your people, Clarke,’ the Commander tells her, attempting at stony but obviously ruffled – at least in Clarke’s eyes. By the door behind her Indra remains statuesque, outwardly unsurprised. ‘They are your responsibility – but I would have them also become mine.’

Clarke doesn’t immediately respond and the Commander takes a short moment to inhale and compose herself. When she opens her mouth again her words come out with a level of warmth that Clarke does not care to hear. This speech has clearly been drafted and doctored, practiced for its importance. Clarke would guess that the Commander has had it prepared since the bounty on her head went up in the first place.

‘As a part of the Coalition the Sky People would have _absolute_ protection under my lead. With consideration, a threat to them would be a threat to me. Warriors, knowledge, trade – these things we would share,’ Lexa appeals. ‘Your people would be my people. Trigedakru and Skaikru working together, sharing the load – in war, and in peace.’

Clarke rolls her eyes and says nothing. She can practically see the frustrated sigh that Lexa swallows, refusing to break composure again.

‘It is a simple thing for an unbreakable bond. No more hard choices.’ She does not mention the Mountain in words, but no one in the room needs her to in order to grasp the meaning. ‘And all I would need is the word of the Skaiheda. Bow to me, Clarke, and your people become mine.’

There is a short silence while Clarke considers the pitch with pursed lips. Then she leans forward a short amount, pulling Lexa forward with anticipation, and says:

‘I will not bow to you, for any reason, on this day or any other.’

The way that Lexa physically recoils is absolutely worth the melodrama. Clarke sits still, body slanted forward, for as many long seconds as it takes to feel as though she’s gotten the message across. Then she sways, relaxing against the back of the chair and letting the formality drain from her body.

‘Besides,’ she says, ‘you’re asking the wrong person.’

The Commander frowns, and glares, and says: ‘You _are_ the Skaiheda, Clarke. They are _your_ people. This choice is yours.’

‘You’re wrong.’

‘My _people_ believe it so,’ Lexa says. ‘ _You_ are the leader of the Sky People, and they will respect a bond with only _you_.’

‘Then it seems you have a problem,’ Clarke says dryly. ‘Because I forfeited my position with the Arkers the second I turned my back to leave. There's no guarantee I would have retained any power even if I’d stayed. Leadership for the Ark is coated in red tape and it lacks any of your “spiritual” consideration. What your people _believe_ doesn’t change the facts: I have no idea what is going on within those walls, what those people want or are prepared to do - and my word means little to them now. Even if I gave you _my_ fealty - which honestly, I'd rather get spaced a thousand times over - I couldn’t say that they would follow suit.’

There is silence in the room while the Commander stares at Clarke and considers her words, and it rapidly becomes clear that this is not a possibility she has considered before now. Behind her Indra shifts a step forward, and opens her mouth to speak for the first time in this impromptu meeting.

‘If you can not give us the Sky People, and you will not lend your own support as Wanheda,’ she starts darkly, ‘what use are you?’

‘Absolutely none,’ Clarke says with a low laugh. ‘But then  _you_ already knew that.’

For a long moment afterwards no one says anything, and Clarke sits calmly and watches Lexa process the pit she has dug herself into. Indra has her usual scowl in place, her gaze locked on Clarke with some wildly odd combination of disgust and what might actually be respect.

‘You will give me the Sky People, Clarke,’ the Commander says firmly when she has gathered herself again, but for all that it is supposed to sound self-assured the undertone of doubt is easy for Clarke to hear.

‘I won’t,’ she says simply. ‘My voice is not their voice. And even if it were, I wouldn't lend it to you.’

‘Because of the Mountain?’

‘Yes,’ Clarke says without hesitation. ‘Because I know you; because you've since made yourself clear: your word is not to be trusted.’

‘Enlighten _me_ , Clarke,’ the heda spits, enflamed by the rejection. ‘What _exactly_ have you seen since the Mountain to let you call me a liar?’

‘You promised a man just reward upon fulfilment of his contract and imprisoned him instead,’ Clarke tells her. ‘Fitting that the first time we meet after your betrayal you do the same to someone else.’

‘Roan is a barbarian – the son of the same woman coming to _kill_ me, the same one who took Costia’s _head_ ,’ Lexa argues, voice raised, and while Clarke seethes at the gall of her she keeps her own voice calm.

‘So you would convict us of the sins of our parents?’ Clarke asks.

It doesn’t jar the Commander the way she thinks it should – but then, Lexa has not spent years alone in a cell waiting for death due to a fixed system and a father who _had_ to do the right thing. She shakes her head and drops her gaze from the Commander. She’s done.

‘You do not know them like I do, Clarke,’ the Commander tries. ‘You don’t understand what –’

‘If you can't keep your word to one man who will believe you can keep your word to a nation?’ Clarke asks, getting to her feet, but nothing in her tone holds expectation of an answer. ‘Take your offer to someone that matters, Commander. Maybe there’s even still someone that will believe it.’

‘ _Clarke_.’

‘Leave now,’ she says, and turns her back to walk towards her furs – still in the corner that she took to in the midst of her fever. ‘I have nothing to offer you, heda. And you have nothing I want. We’re done.’

She lays on her furs with her back to the Commander and fixes her gaze on the candle she keeps by the pelts. It takes a minute or so – achingly long in its tense silence – before she hears the sound of retreating footsteps, and the creak and click of the door as the Commander and her General exit the room.

Clarke wonders how many more meetings will pass before Lexa recognises that she has long since lost the upper hand.

 

\--

 

Her bathroom escorts don’t say too much. Nothing, in fact – they say nothing. There are ten of them, interchangeable presumably based upon the time of day – not that she would know – and three of them are people she has injured before. Clarke knows their faces now, but not their names or the sound that their voices would make breaching the quiet of the corridors.

She wonders what they each sound like when they speak to one another, as guards doubtless do; whether they are friendly to one another or gruff, dutiful; whether they are gentler to their families than they look to be around her.

She wonders what they tell their children when they go home, if they have them – if they talk about guarding the great demon, Wanheda, as though it is an honour; if they talk about her at all.

She wonders if her own mother knows; if the Commander has sent word to the Sky People and they are leaving her there, stranded, captive, for the sake of others; if they are unwilling to unleash her upon the world with the truth that she bears.

Wouldn’t be the first time.

 

\--

 

Time passes. Who knows how much?

 

\--

 

For the first time in months Clarke does not dream of the mountain. Her mind does not run rampant with the scent of blood and fire; she does not watch her own hands pull levers and wield scalpels on unsuspecting throats. She is not scared awake by the sight of bodies melting beneath rocket fuel, ignited, or pale skin turning red with radiation, cooking from the inside out. She does not dwell on Dante and his determination, or Cage and his sick grin, Anya’s trusting hands before she bled to death, Wells’s bloody body in the forest outside the walls, or Finn – his blood on her hands, his lips on her lips, the sound of his gasp as he thanked her. She dreams of none of these things.

No – what she sees is worse.

The temperature of the Ark is ever pleasant, but a life surrounded by metal walls is chilling. The halls are cold and empty, and she stares through the window of the airlock at a man she is sure she knew once but no longer wholly remembers. Her reflection floats over him in the glass, and she recognises herself in his jawline, the shape of his mouth, the colour of his eyes. He speaks, but she cannot hear him. His eyes plead, and he beats at the door until his knuckles split and red streaks across the small window.

This is not how it really happened, and she knows that; her father was calm when he was marched to his death. But there is something about his desperation, his anguish, his wild beating at the wall between them that makes her chest ache and her eyes well with tears.

There is a long moment where he pauses, breath fogging up the glass between them, and mouths one last thing to her before the outer doors part behind him and he is yanked away. Darkness swallows him.

It is not the first time Clarke has dreamed of her father’s death, but it is the first time like this: so separate from the truth, plagued by words that she cannot hear and never will.

She wakes, covered in sweat, shivering down to her bones, and reckless – desperate to see the stars. There is a frantic tingle in her blood that pushes her out of her furs and over to the door. She pounds on it until her fists turn bloody, screams until her throat is hoarse and her lungs are shaking, pleading for air.

The door shudders but remains, and it is not enough to calm her quivering muscles or her frenzied mind. Her solitary chair is lifted in weightless hands, and she bashes it against the doorknob until the legs splinter and fall away, and it collapses into debris just as its partner did back before her fever. When her weapon is gone and the door still shows no sign of budging, she turns her twitching fingers onto anything else in the room that she thinks she can fracture.

The shelving unit is filled with odds and ends that Clarke has examined time and again out of boredom, boredom, boredom, and she takes them all one by one and throws them across the room, aiming for the solid door that keeps her from the sky. Glass ornaments, ceramic pottery, a vase with flowers that have since dried and died – these things all shatter against the wood, littering their shards beneath the doorway – another trap, another fence to keep her in.

There is an old camera, and for a moment she is sure she found it fascinating, but watching it crack and collapse on impact, sending screws and springs and plastic across the room, is far more satisfying for the soul.

Fire licks down her spine, and she shouts but cannot for the life of her remember the words once they’ve parted from her lips. When she tugs hard enough at the edge of it the whole cupboard tips forward, spewing clothes across the floor and crashing loudly to the concrete. She takes a plank from the wreckage and wields it to rip through the crappy plywood table in the centre of the room, flings it towards the mirror in the corner and relishes in the sound the glass makes as it splinters and drops, crystal rain on concrete. The candles go consecutively as her whirlwind circles the room, put out with the wind of being thrown or drowning in their own wax wherever they land.

Then she is in darkness, and it is so close to what she needs but still not enough, not enough, not enough.

The door clicks, swings open without enough light behind it to fill the room, and she could barrel through it – breach into the unknown, push past her prison guards – but that is not how Clarke plays this game. She backs up to the wall beside the door, shrouded by shadow, tempering her breaths while her heart beats wild in her chest.

Wait.

Footsteps outside. Two, maybe three people. Trigedasleng – the call for light.

Wait.

An affirmative. The crackle of a flame. The whoosh of a stick being swung – a torch.

Wait.

A ring of light moving into the room. The crunch of shattered glass beneath heavy boots.

Clarke kicks the door closed, and lets the shout of pain that comes from the impact refresh her flowing veins. Whirling out from behind the door is simple, grabbing the torch from the guard’s strong hand slightly less so.

He is clutching at his face with his free hand, blood running down between his fingers from his nose. The torch is blinding in his hands, but he is not expecting her. She stamps on the soft top of his boot, digs in to his instep and tugs the wooden torch out of unaware hands. Cracking it down on the top of his skull doesn’t put out the fire at all. The guard, on the other hand, crumples – out for the count.

The second man through the door is clobbered similarly with the flaming torch, sparks shooting from the impact with his leatherclad shoulder, and she trades blows with him for a number of seconds before spinning to hook the wooden club into the back of his knee, knocking him out of stance and sending him sprawling.

There is a woman after him: toned, spry, expectant. She does not bumble into Clarke’s attack. She is methodical, trained, calculating – and she approaches like any hunter would. But Clarke is not a cornered animal – and she _will_ not be.

For all her training, the woman falters in the face of Wanheda’s rage.

Theirs is not a fight. There is no flow to it, no method, no thought of technique, no attempt at evasion – not on Clarke’s behalf, anyway. She pegs her flaming club forward into the guard’s face and follows its momentum promptly with her body, knocking the woman out into the hall and crashing them both to the ground. Clarke roars and lays into her captor with bloody fists; when her prey hits back she ignores it, even when she feels her chest lurch from the impact and the mere act of breathing starts to hurt.

Rough hands wrap beneath her shoulders, and when she is dragged back from the body on the floor the woman’s face is bloody, eyes dazed but no less dangerous behind her swollen skin. Judging from the sting in her own eyes and the way the world turns slowly red while she thrashes in the grasp of her captors, Clarke’s is probably the same.

They drag her back into her ruined room, over towards the bed, and she screams and shouts and spits and bites at the hands that grab at her face and try to move her gaze. Someone shoves a cup to her lips, pours viscous liquid past them and plugs her nose until she swallows it. They wrestle her back to the mattress until the drug does its work, and all the fight seeps from her limbs.

She loses consciousness to the vague memory of her father’s unfamiliar face mouthing words to her through the glass before time and space took him away from her and wonders what it was that he said – if it was a warning; if it was advice; if it was a dying wish; if he cried for his frozen body and its endless drift in space; if it was that he is proud of her now, as she is, or ever will be again.

Dreamless sleep ensnares her, and maybe it’s a good thing that she’ll never know.

 

\--

 

The homebrew sedative leaves her numb long after she has awoken.

The table is gone from her room, along with the shrapnel that littered the floor by the door, the remains of her last chair and her broken mirror. The cabinet has been righted – it’s contents sparser now, with the old world trinkets gone from the shelves. Wax stains dot the floor where the old candles landed in her hysteria, and Clarke finds a single long shard of glass behind the wall drapery where the mirror used to sit. Of her mania, these are the only signs that remain.

The room feels insurmountably empty: just Clarke, a bed, and her ghosts.

It’s almost fitting that the room should be as barren, as empty, as its occupant, but even so there is something missing – something they do not share. She is lost and hazy, body aching, ribs shooting pain across her chest with every shift of her right arm, but the glass shard digging into the palm of her hand hardly registers any pain at all.

There were pencils in a bunker once, and charcoal on the Ark, but blood is not a medium she has used before. She pens it across the wall behind the drapery when it has dripped down to her fingertips – short strokes to keep the colour bold before she clenches her fist to top up the paint. The rich curtain nudges at her shoulder and the side of her face, gets in the way, and she grabs at it and tears it down to expose her canvas.

By the time Shara comes with a bowl of food and her regular poultices, there are crude bodies outlined on the wall – slumped in dining chairs, collapsed and spewing red across their floor, reduced to bones and fused together with ash, and dirt, and each other. Clarke feels faint, and stomps drops of blood into the concrete beneath her, but there are not near enough people on that wall, not even close – not when she could draw entire murals of death and destruction and still not be done, not when there is a piece of paper lodged beneath her sock with nine hundred and thirty seven lines that won’t fit on the skin of her back.

She doesn’t stop until Shara grabs at her shoulder and drags her away, forces her to sit on the bed and puts the bowl on the mattress beside her. The healer tuts and cleans the cut on her hand before moving her attention to Clarke’s beaten face. Everything stings when the woman touches it – Clarke’s brow, split and stitched back together; her swollen eye, blackened now probably; her jaw; her cheek; the bridge of her nose; the lip that spilled blood into her own tasteless mouth without her ever knowing.

When she is done, the healer shoves the plate into the blonde’s lap and tells her to eat. The mere thought of it has bile bubbling up the back of Clarke’s throat, but she dips her fingers into the bowl and forces herself to take the small muesli squares down regardless of the fact.

The doors open again while she does so, but the sound hardly registers. She doesn’t note Lexa’s attendance until the harsh woman is standing directly before her, scowling and glaring down at Clarke’s idle body seated on the bed.

‘You tried to escape last night,’ the Commander says. ‘Why now? Has someone spoken to you?’

The words are accusatory, vicious, concerned. It should worry her – should panic her to even think of the things that must be going on outside these walls to make Lexa think she would run to them. It should strike her with fear for her people: what they are doing, what is being done to them. It should do all these things, or at least make her curious – but it doesn’t even manage that.

She stares until the heda’s fire dims, and then forces herself to chew another tasteless brick of grain to fill her nauseous belly. Her hand itches to continue painting.

Somewhere off to the side Shara’s voice sounds – a pleasant call to her heda, a question to look upon the wall. Clarke watches the Commander comply – watches her face pale and her lips purse. Clarke wonders why someone so fascinated by taking blood should be so evidently sickened by the sight of it.

Clarke’s head lolls back and she ignores the sound of concern that Lexa presents. It is not the first time that Lexa has asked someone else to diagnose Clarke’s worth, and it likely won’t be the last.

‘Em gaf in soncha,’ Shara says stiffly, and Clarke stares at the ceiling and pretends not to understand.

_She needs sunlight._

‘Clarke,’ the Commander says after a long silence has passed. It is not fair that someone so jagged inside should sound so gentle. ‘You must stand now. Come with me.’

Her gaze is slow to respond to the call, her mind even more so. It takes a long moment of staring at the Commander to properly notice the concern unmasked on her face, and a longer one to realise that she herself shouldn’t _care_. By that time she is already on her feet, and it is far too late to take her compliance back. The doors of Clarke’s room open when the Commander knocks, and she leads her captive out into the hall, beyond the familiar path to the restrooms and around more corners than Clarke is necessarily prepared for.

The guards follow them, and Clarke expects this; she does not expect the weakness in her knees when they make it to the stairs, or Shara’s arm to come behind her and steady her at the waist.

‘Yu don lus jus,’ the healer mutters. ‘Yu gon ste yuj, Wanheda.’

Given the dizziness that begins to overcome her and the number of hallways they take in between when they find the stairwell blocked by rubble, it is easy for Clarke to lose track of the number of flights they traverse. The doors they bring her to are vaguely familiar, however – even to her absent gaze. Lexa, still ahead of her, leading the pack – pushes the doors open without a care and steps beyond into blinding white. Clarke squints, raises a hand to cover her eyes in spite of the pain that lances through her chest with the movement, and lets Shara direct her steps forward.

‘Komba raun,’ Shara instructs simply, pushing Clarke on in spite of the way the girl stumbles in the glare. Clarke feels the touch of cloth on her face, sliding back and over her shoulder only to be replaced by something else: the sweet ozone scent that follows the rain and the ghost of a breeze on her neck.

It steals all the breath from her lungs. Her throat constricts, and her sightless eyes itch, and she struggles to inhale, chest heaving, pain arcing through her ribs.

‘I can’t see,’ she gasps out. 'Can't - I -’

What a cruel thing, what a truth, to finally be let into the world and not be able to see it. What a god damned joke. Her knees give and Shara’s arm tightens around her waist as the stocky little woman heaves Clarke’s weight back up, refusing to let her fall.

‘Ron op em taim,’ comes the order, and Clarke only settles for the certainty in the healer’s voice.

She blinks – she can tell because the blinding whiteness turns to rose beneath her swollen brow, and then back again – and then again, and then a dozen times more, and every time the glare recedes just a little bit more. By the time her breathing has evened out and the pain in her chest has tempered to a dull throb, she can make out the vague green shape of the mountains ahead of her.

‘Chof,’ she pants, and taps at Shara’s back to prompt her arm to drop, ‘chof, mochof. Ai laik gud nau. Mochof.’

The healer’s arm retracts slowly, caution of her shaky legs, and Clarke stands on her own and watches the world come into focus. There are thin clouds in the sky – a storm dispersing – and the rich orange hues peeking between them mark the early evening. Behind her, Shara and the Commander exchange words, but not a word of it reaches her. There is nothing in this moment more important than the gift ahead of her: the hills outlined in the evening light, the differed shades and definition of trees in the distance, the peals of smoke rising from the lives below.

She is on a balcony overlooking the world, and it is more beautiful than she remembers.

Clarke steps to the edge, closes her eyes and sways with the breeze. It is so strange to her again not to stand in stale air; to be able to feel the world moving around her in so simple a way as the wind. It’s cold, and goosebumps erupt beneath her cotton clothes – refreshing, ugly, glorious. Someone calls her name, begs her back to reality, and Clarke opens her eyes when she feels the warmth of another body stepping up beside her.

‘Nobody told you what was happening outside these walls,’ Lexa says gently. It is not a question, and all of the accusation from earlier is gone. She sounds as Clarke feels – tired; sad. ‘You weren't trying to run to your people.’

‘No,’ Clarke agrees simply, greedy eyes roaming the landscape.

The Commander stands with her silently for a moment, solemn, and Clarke relishes the moment of peace knowing that – like all things between them – it cannot last.

‘You are mindsick,’ Lexa says eventually.

Inwardly Clarke scoffs at the term, but her gaze falls to the ledge before her, the sheer drop down, and the idle curiosity she entertains towards the thought of the fall – how long it would take, how quickly it would end, what it would feel like to go – spites her. There are better words for it – there were before the fallout, before her people went to space and forgot to care about each other, and there still are now – but “mindsick” certainly gets the point across. And from her nightmares, from her fits and her lack of breath, from her violence and her rage and the stubborn discomfort that led to her infection, the diagnosis is fairly clear: to call her “mindsick” would not be untrue.

Beside her, Lexa shift anxiously, hands clasped before her. Clarke ignores it and fixes her gaze on the horizon, tracing the woods she once made home.

‘Tell me how I can help you,’ Lexa quietly commands after a long moment has passed, and the tone of desperation – of _concern_ – burns, acrid to Clarke’s ears.

‘I don’t know that you can,’ Clarke tells her, and in spite of everything that has happened thus far she doesn’t mean for it to hurt. The way that Lexa flinches says it does anyway.

They stand together until the sun sets beneath the hills and say nothing else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note on the **Trigedasleng** used in this chapter: some of the words used do not currently exist in the Trigedasleng dictionary and are my best approximation of what that word should be (given my limited knowledge of Trigedasleng syntax). If these terms should be otherwise addressed in the future I will change the dialogue to reflect the canonical language. That said, here is a translation of the lines used here:
> 
>  _Wanheda kom au nonheda taim haken sef ona_ – The Commander of Death would become Commander of No-one if infection moved in.
> 
>  _Shara dreins haken, Shara kot we yu stedaun tishu_ – Shara drained sickness, Shara cut away your dead tissue.
> 
>  _Shara don fis yu op, yu chil daun gon Shara_ – Shara healed you, so you will be calm for Shara.
> 
>  _Yu don lus jus. Yu gon ste yuj, Wanheda._ – You lost blood. You will be strong, Wanheda.
> 
>  _Komba raun_ \- Come.
> 
>  _Ron op em taim._ \- Give it time.
> 
>  _Chof, chof, mochof. Ai laik gud nau. Mochof._ – Thanks, thanks, thank you. I am good now. Thank you.


End file.
